You probably want to read part one if you haven’t already done so, or this won’t make much sense.

I think most people have certain preferences when it comes to quarterbacks and how they play. Some like the fun loving gregarious bombers; others prefer tacticians who quietly go about their business and avoid the costly mistake. As we will see below, successes have occurred in most personality types. Nevertheless, we may all have our preferences—the lenses through which we view the player.

What was your gut reaction to the Jay Cutler trade involving Kyle Orton? I’m not talking about your reaction to all the off-season drama, but rather, your reaction to whether Cutler is a substantial upgrade over Orton, or whether Chicago overpaid for the difference. The exchange of those two quarterbacks involves the exchange of vastly different styles. Orton didn’t make this list because he hasn’t quite made it to 1,000 career passes (a mark he should reach this season), but his personality type is CSVG, and pretty strongly so, which we will see is almost exactly opposite of Cutler with the exception of the Gambler trait.
I list all 16 personality types below. I grouped them by opposite pairs (so CSVG is next to BFYH) so you can see the contrast between players of the exact opposite types. I then listed the opposite pair groups in descending order, based on the frequency with which that personality and its polar opposite appear. Thus, the most common personality types are listed first, and the infrequent ones last. As you might guess, several of the traits are related. “Fun” Quarterbacks tend to be “Gamblers” also (about a 67% chance), while “Safe” Quarterbacks tend to be “Holders”. As a result, though the distribution of the sub-types are uniform (there are roughly equal numbers of Bombers and Completers, for example), the distribution of personality types is not. The quarterbacks are listed within each personality type by the magnitude of their “personality”. Quarterbacks who are more extreme toward a personality type are going to be listed near the top.

As noted by commenter Oneblankspace below, here are the categories being used:

These guys are your classic game managers—and not in the derogatory sense that the term is too often applied. They take what the defense gives them, and complete passes while avoiding turnovers. At their best, they can efficiently move a team down the field, often letting others get the glory for the touchdown. At their worst, they can check down every pass, and take too many sacks while they avoid those interceptions.

These guys take what the defense gives them, too—if you consider that patch of green behind the last safety something the defense is giving them. The BFVG’s are the quintessential gunslingers. When they are on, they can combine with a running game to provide quick strike scores and rip the heart out of the opponent. When they are off, they can rip their own fans’ hearts out with costly interceptions and lots of incompletions. Apparently, they can also change their stripes and win with great defenses, as evidenced by the extremes of a guy who won four rings, and another guy often credited as a game manager for managing to win with a great defense, but who shows up with this personality type. The seven rings by QB's with this personality type finishes just ahead of CFVH and CSVH, each with six.

This personality type is very close to the gunslingers above. In fact, the only difference is the propensity to rack up yards at a higher rate than touchdowns. They not only have a quick trigger on the field and avoid sacks, they may also have one off of it, guaranteeing Super Bowl victories or demanding trades when feeling disrespected.

The top quarterback in Chase's list comes from this personality type. At their best, these quarterbacks are efficient game managers who can still rack up high touchdown totals. Again, their downfall, for those who are not as good, is the tendency to take sacks or not throw for enough yards.

Safe Gambler may sound like an oxymoron, and in this case, its not a good combination as a whole. This is one of the least successful personality types, with Brodie and Gabriel representing the best case scenarios, and Bledsoe having the only Super Bowl start.

A Fun Bomber who may have a tendency to hold on to the ball a little too long waiting to make an even bigger play and pick up chunks of yardage--who does that sound like? If you guessed both of last year's Super Bowl quarterbacks, you are right on both counts. This is a group that features lots of high peaks, and some valleys as well.

This group is a little more conservative than the previous group. They tend to hold on to the ball waiting for a big play, but are a little safer in risking the interception versus making the touchdown pass.

At their best, players from this group can win all pro honors. This personality trait manifests itself on the bad end in guys who don't produce enough yards, or throw too many picks. It is similar to our true gunslingers group, except these guys perform better in the completions category.

The Fun/Vulture combination coupled with the Completer/Holder subgroups means that these guys will wait on plays to develop and throw for completions, but still can rack up league leading touchdown figures. On the negative end, the bad version may not get enough yards to offset the sacks they might take. This personality leads with the most Super Bowl starting appearances, with an overall record of 6-7.

This is an eclectic mix of guys who again show that the Safe Gambler combination is not a particularly great one. Nevertheless, virtually all of these guys had decent careers or better, even if they are not among the all-time greats, as each was able to make enough plays downfield.

The Bomber/Vulture combined with the Safe/Holder persona matches some of the greatest running quarterbacks of recent times at its extreme. These guys will hold the ball (or run it) rather than risk the interception, but will take the big shots down the field for scores when the opportunity presents itself. At their worst, they struggle mightily with completions.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 6:58 am and is filed under Totally Useless.
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Hey I get to be first. As a psychologist certified in two models of personality assessment, I first one to commend your efforts and also your reasoning. The Myers-Briggs can be a good "model" to start with, especially in that personality is complex and it involves numerous combinations. And the Myers-Briggs is well known and people can relate to it.

With that being said, personality assessment is getting away from putting people into groups and doing more about where people stand on a trait itself. This is a fine distinciton and cannot be explained more, but it simply involves saying how high or low someone is rather than saying that they are a ......

Lastly, the most accepted model of personality is the Big Five or Five Factor Model. A good place to start is this website in which one can take a well respected version of the test. Just search IPIP-NEO. It has some similarities to the Myers-Briggs but has an enourmous data base to support how it configures personality.

You guys run an impressive operation and show how fun plus difficult measurement of concepts can be.

When I get my daughter out of college, maybe I can afford to be a sponsor.

Ah Chris Chandler. Even though I'm a Niner fan that 1998 ATL team was a fun one in retrospect. Jamal Anderson racking up an ungodly 410 carries from which he never recovered. And Chandler either getting sacked or throwing bombs to Martin and Terrance Mathis who averaged 17+ yards per reception. Good stuff.

A quick check of Chandlers TD passes thrown shows that a higher than normal percentage came from long distance.

I know they each have fewer than 600 career attempts, but for us Vikings fans out there, can you tell us how Sage Rosenfels and Tarvaris Jackson stack up? With 30 TDs and 29 Ints. in 567 attempts, I'm betting Sage is 100% "fun."

Sage is most definitely an extreme Fun Gambler. In fact, he's about as extreme on the Fun scale as you can get. He shows up as a BFVG. He is borderline in the other two categories.

Tarvaris is about as neutral as it comes. His scores in the five categories are: YPA-94, Comp-92, TD-97, Int-94, Sack-93. This would make him a borderline B-F-V-G as well, but a weak one that could change with more attempts.

I don't think Sage Rosenfels is changing his stripes at his age. Although Vikings fans better hope he isn't THAT bad at throwing interceptions with a larger sample size.

Nevertheless, I'm sure he will be called a "game manager" in the first week's broadcast.

Josh McCown's link should end in 01, not 00. (00 is also a QB, but older [1962-68])

From the Bears QBs I can remember off the top of my head (1980ish-present), there were/have been 4 CSYH (including 3 in 1984--Fuller, Landry, McMahon; McMahon also played with Harbaugh), 4 BFYG (including Evans and Avellini--both in Chicago 1977-83), 2 CSVG, 2 CFVH, 1 CSVH, 1 CFVG, 1 BSYG.

Warner and Culpepper are interesting fits in the B-F-Y-H because they both complete very high percentages of passes. Young is also somewhat of an anomaly as a C-F-Y-H since he had high TD%s and low Int%s, I guess his time in Tampa Bay skews his numbers a bit. Also, I wonder if YPC would be a better variable than YPA in the Bomber-Completer metric since it better demonstrates a QBs big play ability.

Oh, sorry for the double post, but could you give us Brees splits between his time in San Diego and New Orleans? He seemed to play in a more conservative ball control in SD vs. the more explosive passing attack the Saints employ.

It depends on which San Diego version of Brees you are talking about. Clearly, he is throwing it a lot more in New Orleans, averaging 614 attempts per season in New Orleans versus 450 his final two seasons in SD.

His rate stats, though, are pretty much similar to the 2004-2005 version of Drew Brees in San Diego. The breakdown lists his ypa, comp, td, int and sack scores in three different periods.

He has always been good at avoiding sacks, he improved across the board in all other areas in 2004, most in TD, and he has been basically the same QB in NO, with a lot more throws and even better at avoiding sacks.

Frug, on the YPA/YPC thing, I think it would lead to the same answers ultimately. If your YPA is average and your comp is low, you will show up as a Bomber and you will have a high YPC. If your ypa is average and your comp is high, you are going to have a low YPC and show up as a Completer.

Plus, I had the YPA in this neat little chart and it would have been more work. Actually, that's the real answer.

Young was very good at everything except sacks. He comes out as Fun because, while he was good at avoiding ints, he was even better at throwing td's, leading the league several times. However, he's unusual because he then also comes in as a Yardage eater, because his YPA advanced score was better than his TD scorein those years he was leading the league. His 123 in YPAi is tied for 2nd highest behind only Romo and tied with Warner, but we can assume that Romo will finish below that if he plays for a long time.

Thanks Jason. Now that I think about using YPA instead of YPC for the purposes of this article really wouldn't change much since if two QBs had the same YPA and one has a higher Com% he put up fewer 0 yard attempts while the other had more deep completions.

I think that this is the dumbest trade of all-time. First stupid move by the Denver Broncos, they fire Shanahan. Second, they give away a pro-bowl caliber quarterback in Jay Cutler for a guy who could not even lead them to the super bowl but neverless was a solid thrower. Problem is that unlike the erratic Rex Grossman is that they will not take chances which is why Grossman was able to take the bears to the dance in 06 where they lossed to the underrated Colts who are led by future hall of famer Peyton Manning. The problem with Kyle Orton and Griese is that they are like Chad Pennington, they will not take chances. They will give you solid numbers but they will not win a super bowl for any team that they play for. Dan Marino is like that too. Denver is so stupid for trading for Kyle Orton and giving up a star in the making in Jay Cutler.

The Chicago Bears to me is a team that will probably never have a good quarterback They lack the patience to see a quarterback through and they do not know how to produce a good quarterback that will become a hall of famer. They believe in defense and after that then the quarterback. IF I was Jay Cutler I would NEVER go to the windy city to play QB.

Never the less, I hope that it works out for both teams. Hopefully you will see them both in the playoffs more than once.

I'm confused on how the Gambler rating is calculated. I get that a Holder rating would be 100/sackRate (so that a higher rating means more sacks), but Comp%/Int% makes it seem that increasing completion percentage would increase the Gambler rating, when the first part of this entry says that a Gambler is more likely to throw incompletions and interceptions.

Eddo, the personality types are calculated by simply subtracting the scores in the two categories. In the Gambler/Holder case, it is sack% score - (int% score + comp% score)/2. If it is a positive number, that means the player had a higher rating in avoiding sacks than cumulatively in avoiding interceptions and completing passes.

A higher rating in the sacks category means less sacks, just like a higher rating in the interceptions category means less interceptions. Higher is always better on the advanced passing table.